April Forever
by Monsters of NY
Summary: In a sequel to "Turtles Forever", the old toon version of April travels to the 2003-verse. Absolutely no worlds get threatened, althought there is a lot of talking. Part of "Monsters of New York".
1. Forever and a Day

**Author's Notes:**

I've always liked the 2003 toon's incarnation of April O'Neil, an appreciation that has increased over the past few years as my life increasingly begans to mirror hers. Her arc is a rather atypical one for cartoons: she starts out succesful (an assistant to a very renowned scientist-a plum position for a twenty-three-year old one year out of college) falls due to the actions of others, and never manages to reach those heights again (O'Neil Tech nonwithstanding, and since we never see her actively involved with it, the point still stands), instead finding a measure of happiness in the friendship of four turtles, a romance with the sort of guy she probably wouldn't have given the time of day during her college years, and ownership of a store left to her by her father. Still, I've always wondered if April is truly satisfied with her life, given what she's lost; I've always imagined that she harbors some resentment at the fact that she never obtained the life she originally wanted for herself. This is something I hope to address here, as she meets a version of herself that _does_ actively follow her ambitions and _does_ manage to live her dream.

**Synopsis: **A science experiment gone not quite right brings our favorite jumpsuit-clad reporter to the TMNT 2003 universe, where she meets her shop-owning, married counterpart. Conversations on turtles, career, marriage, sex, womanhood and happiness ensue.

**Setting:** New York City, sometime in the second half of year 2011.

**Characters of Interest:** April O'Neil (2003 'toon version); April O'Neil (1987 'toon version); Casey Jones (2003 'toon version).

**Legal Disclaimers:** Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and related characters are trademarks of Viacom International Inc., and were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. No copyright infringement is intended. Original characters are, of course, mine.

* * *

It was just one of those days, April O'Neil reflected, with no small amount of annoyance. Her eternal search for the Almighty Story had led her to volunteer herself as a test subject for one of New York's countless crackpot scientists' experiments—this time, one involving instantaneous transportation technology that The Shredder had perfected a year ago—and now she stood alone in an empty warehouse that looked nothing like Dr. Stein's laboratory.

April stepped outside the building—fortunately, the shutter wasn't locked—and into the streets. A quick scan of the skyline confirmed that she was still in good old Manhattan…except that from the looks of it, "good" and "old" had given way to "dark" and "overbearing". It even smelled different, with the subtle smell of rotting fruit diffused over everything.

Indeed, as she walked through the familiar streets of the city, the aura of Wrong intensified. The fashions, the people, the cars…it was New York alright, as seen through the eyes of a rather disturbed being. A look at a newspaper (date: February 18, 2011) revealed similar weird disparities: no articles on Ninja Turtles, Technodrome attacks, or groundbreaking experiments in animal control, but plenty of stuff on the economy, celebrity gossip and "tea parties". And who the heck was President Obama? Clearly she'd been sent to an alternate universe, or a dark future.

After trying unsuccessfully to hail the guys on her Turtle Communicator (and wasn't it weird how a lot of people seemed to be talking into tiny handheld phones?) April continued her tentative exploration, wishing she had a camera with her—after all, a dark Manhattan would make for a great story. She didn't get far before spotting a threatening-looking street thug—and she had lots of experience identifying those—making advances towards her. As she turned around to avoid running into him, she saw another thug coming in from another direction, and then yet another: before she knew it, she had been corralled into a darkened alley, with the thugs cutting off her only escape route. One of those days indeed.

"They never learn, do they," said the leader, once they'd caught up to her. "These streets are dangerous—particularly if you're walking alone dressed like that."

_What's wrong with the way I dress? _ "Listen guys, if you want to kidnap me or whatever, please know, I have friends." A bluff, and not one she had much confidence in, but stranger things had happened.

"Kidnap you? Nah, we'll just settle for your money—or something of equal value." The last part was said as his eyes burned holes in the reporter's chest, which suddenly felt rather exposed in her semi-open jumpsuit.

As she hoped against hope for a surprise save by the turtles, April braced for the worst. One of the thugs moved in towards her, but before he could reach the reporter, he was beaned at the back of the head by a bottle of what appeared to be baby food thrown at explosive speed.

"Score!" said a voice behind the three thugs, belonging to a man April couldn't see, blocked as he was from her view by her attackers. The three punks—including one with sludge and blood mixed in his hair—turned towards the newcomer, leaving her unattended.

"You know," said April's would-be savior. "I might have semi-retired from the vigilante business, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you smegs assault the city's babes—you got that?"

The three thugs rushed to attack their new opponent, but that turned out to be a mistake: with martial arts moves that at times seemed even better than the turtles', the man—which, as April could now see, was white, black shoulder-length haired, early thirties, possessed a lower-middle class demeanor, carried a grocery bag, and was not attractive in a way that her friend Irma would have found irresistible—quickly dispatched the thugs, leaving them unconscious on the street. Once, he was done, he turned towards her, and with a smile said: "You okay?"

April wanted to run in and kiss her savior. She settled for a peck on his cheek. "Thank you. If you hadn't come when you did…"

"No problem—it's what I do," the man said, blushing lightly. She noticed him staring at her, looking as if he was trying to make his mind up about something. "Listen, are you okay? You look sort of…lost."

After considering her words—savior or not, she knew nothing about this man—she decided for the truth. "You're right. This might sound weird, but I'm not sure I know where I am. I mean, I know where I am, but I don't know if where I am is where I'm supposed to be, or how I got here. Does that make any sense at all?" She said, with a hesitant smile.

"I've heard weirder. Well, if it helps, this is New York, and I'm Casey Jones. Pleased to meet ya…"

"April. April O'Neil."

* * *

It was one of those days, April O'Neil reflected, as she used one of her newly-scarce moments of peace and quiet to pore over all the reading material Karai had supplied on how to begin a start-up. Designing a commercially viable fully-electric car had been simplicity itself compared to the gargantuan task that was legally bringing it into the market. What's more, Casey had just called to announce that he was bringing someone over, and given his tone, she did not expect terribly good things from it.

As she sipped from her glass of cheap wine—a habit she'd cultivated during college as a way of carrying on through cram sessions with girlfriends, and which she occasionally indulged in when alone—and tried to fight off sleep, April tried to read a particularly tricky line on patents before realizing that she'd already read it twice before. Oh well—getting a few minutes of shut-eye wouldn't kill anyone. After moving the papers away from her as to not accidentally drool on them, she rested her head against her left arm and dozed off.

As she finished her lecture on the plausibility of Minovsky Particles to an audience of talking cow heads, April was brought back to reality by a pat on her shoulder. "Hey, Babe," Casey said. "It's me."

"Casey…" April said with a smile that time had made instinctive. "I was just going through these papers…guess I'm more tired than I thought." Then as she shook off her sleepiness, she added: "Did you bring your friend with you?"

"Yeah…about that," he said sheepishly. "Remember that time the guys met that other version of the guys, except that they weren't quite the guys?"

"Yes…" Where was he going with this? Surely he didn't mean…

"Well, it's sort of happened again, only this time…well, look." Casey said, pointing towards the apartment entrance.

The woman standing there wore a dazed look, the sort that suggested that she was staring into the mouth of madness and was trying her damnedest not to fall inside. Her face was that of a stranger, but April recognized it instantly. She. Herself. April O'Neil.


	2. On A Teams, Breasts, and Counterparts

She didn't really look like her, the woman sitting before her: once you got past the skin tone and height, the differences outweighed the similarities. Hair color and style, eye color, posture…even her body shape was considerably slimmer than her own hourglass figure. But still, staring at those green eyes that were themselves staring back at hers, she could tell. _Holy scoop!_

"Hi…April," she said, testing the name out. "I'm sorry for intruding, but Casey—your husband—he told me you might be able to help. He was kind enough to rescue me, and he told me that you might be able to help me get back to my world." She was babbling. Not good.

"Welcome…April," the other her said, equally uncomfortable with the name. "We're…glad to help. Unfortunately, Don—you know Don, right?—is the one who knows how our transdimentional portal generator works, and he's off at a retreat with Splinter and the other turtles. It'll be at least a couple of days before we can even contact him."

That was not what she wanted to hear. "So I'm stuck here? Oh, brother! You guys seem nice at all, but I need to get back to my world!"

It'd been the wrong thing to say, as April noticed that fact immediately. The tension in the room had been high; now her unconscious snub had made it nigh-unbearable. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. It's just…this world is so _different_."

Casey, the sweetie, was doing all he can to ease things. After offering her a chair, he took out a wine glass from the pantry and poured her some wine, which she gladly took (even if alcohol really wasn't her thing). "So, babe, April here is a reporter," he said, as he took his own chair. "I'm not sure, but we think she's from the same place those other guys were from—the ones we met a couple of years back."

They'd arrived at that conclusion as they'd walked to Casey's apartment at his insistence. After making some small talk, he'd suddenly asked her if he'd ever met any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a question which she answered in the affirmative. From there, they'd deduced that she'd arrived at another dimension, and, after sharing their respective experiences with guys who weren't quite the guys, realized that they'd each met the other's turtles—probably.

Unfortunately, Casey couldn't stay: a baby's cry came from another room, causing him to excuse himself and leave her alone with her counterpart.

* * *

Now alone with the jumpsuit-clad her, April was still speechless—not because she had nothing to say, but the exact opposite. She wondered if her counterpart was having the same trouble.

"Casey's a great guy, isn't he?" Jumpsuit said, nicely sidestepping the issue.

"Yeah, he is," she said, "He's rough around the edges, but now…I can't imagine living without him," she said, with startling conviction. While it was true, it wasn't the sort of thing she would have admitted to a total stranger—even if the stranger was, in effect, herself. "How about you? Anybody special in your life?"

"Not really. It's hard to find good men when you spend all your time between work, hanging out with mutant turtles, and getting threatened, kidnapped and tied up."

"Oh," she said, surprised at the frank admission. "Does that happen much—getting kidnapped?"

Other-Her rolled her eyes. "More often than I'd like. It's gotten to the point where I can recognize a rope's brand by feel. Still, the turtles always rescue me, and it helps me get the story, so I guess I can't complain too much."

_Yes you can. You can complain a lot_, April said to herself. She did not express this opinion. She didn't usually seek trouble, but it still ended up finding her much too often for her liking. Actually inviting it…

"I'm guessing you don't get kidnapped a lot, though," said the Other Her.

"Kidnapped specifically? Only twice—once by my ex-employer Baxter Stockman and another by aliens. Threatened? A whole bunch."

Now it was the other her's turn to be surprised. "You worked for Baxter Stockman?"

"Um, yes," she said sheepishly. "For about a month, until I realized what he was up to with those mousers of his. He tried to kill me, I ran into the sewers, and the turtles rescued me. And that's how I met them."

"Really. I met them when saved _me_ from the Shredder's goons. I was doing a story on a bunch of mysterious thefts, and I guess he didn't like what I was saying. Boy, were they in for a surprise. The mousers came in later, when they destroyed my apartment."

"Heh. That's funny," other-April muttered.

"What? Losing my apartment?"

"No! Not that…sorry to hear about it, though. It's just…you were chased into the sewers by the Shredder's goons and had your apartment destroyed by mousers. I was chased into the sewers by mousers and had my apartment destroyed by the Foot. It's just weird, is all."

"That IS freaky," other April said, smiling. "Sorry to hear about your apartment, though."

The ice now broken, the two Aprils began chatting animatedly about the similarities and dissimilarities between their universes. It was the sort of conversation April never really had anymore, and the type she hadn't realized she'd missed. The turtles (barring Donny, sometimes) were more fun to be around than to talk to; Casey was Casey, with a specific range of approachable topics; Robyn lived in L.A.; Karai, when she wasn't trying to kill them, was too steeped in her weirdness to make conversation a comfortable prospect; Splinter was alright, when he was around, which wasn't a lot, lately. Having someone she could talk about in this manner felt like something new, and something that she would like to do regularly.

Some minutes later, Casey returned cradling a still-crying Shadow in his hands. "Okay, babe, I'm stumped. I changed her diaper and tried feeding her, but nothing's working. Any ideas?"

"Let me try," the other her interjected. Taking the five-month old from Casey, she began gently rocking her. It worked: within moments, the crying stopped, and Shadow settled back into blissful sleep. "She's adorable," the other April commented as she returned the baby to Casey. "What's her name?"

"Her name's Shadow," Casey said.

April bit her lip in frustration. In the months they had had Shadow, the infant had never really taken to April, a situation which persistently frustrated her. Trying to hold the baby in the way her counterpart had would have been a surefire way to increase her crying, and there the baby was, reacting to a complete stranger if she were her actual mother. It felt like a personal affront, even though she knew it wasn't and that it would be unfair to treat her as it had been. "So April, it's getting late," she said, trying to change the subject before her darker emotions overtook the pleasure she'd just felt at having made a new friend. "Would you like to change into something else before going to bed? I mean, you are staying here, right?"

"You mean I can stay?" other-her said, brightening up.

"You mean she can stay?" Casey mimicked, mouth open.

"Of course," April said, not entirely convinced that she believed the words coming out of her mouth. You need help, and who are we to deny it to you? After all, you're almost family."

* * *

April's wardrobe was expansive but limited; aside from a few specialized looks, it consisted mostly of non-descript pants and t-shirts. In the end, other-April picked one of those t-shirts and a pair of cotton shorts.

"Good thing we're more or less the same size," the other April commented offhandedly, as she observed how her new outfit fit her. "Although it look like I'll have to buy some new bras tomorrow." Indeed, the top she'd chosen fit her considerably snugly in the chest area, making them considerably more prominent than the shirt's original owner's ever were.

"I have to ask," said April, as she changed into a similar outfit. "Why the jumpsuit? Is it fashionable where you're from?"

"Not really. I guess I don't really have a reason—it just _feels_ right. I was just walking by the store, saw it, and I fell in love with it. It also helps that it's actually quite comfortable—oh, and I hear its quite popular with my audience."

"Really. Male or female?"

"Male—why do you ask?"

"No reason," April said, coyly. Funny story, though: one time, I had to pretend to be a reporter to get some information for the guys…guess how I dressed up."

"Get out!," other-her said, her face all mischievous glee. "We really are the same person, aren't we?"

"Guess so," April said with a smile.

* * *

With Casey and Mrs. O'Neil turned in for the night, _Miss_ O'Neil was now alone in the living room with nothing but a TV for companionship. It was late, and she would normally have been sleeping soundly right now, but the events of the day had left her with an indissoluble restlessness. After lying on the couple's couch for ten minutes trying to call forth the sleep, she gave up and got up.

The couple had allowed her to peruse and use their DVD collection (DVD's were apparently what had replaced cassette tapes in this dimension) and after scanning the racks filled with movies with unfamiliar names and even more unfamiliar actors, she picked one with a familiar title—_The A-Team_—and, after figuring out how to work the player, she sat back on the couch and began watching.

Although it had the incorrect actors, the movie was otherwise enjoyable. Still, it underscored the differences between this world and the one she had left behind–the acting, the way the characters spoke, the situation–it all seemed foreign to her.

Would she ever return? Casey and April had promised her that Donatello would return her home; given the mixed successes of her own Donatello's inventions, she wasn't all that sure. Still, everything would turn out all right—right? It always did—in her universe.

April's thoughts turned to her job at Channel Six and her boss, Burne Thompson. If she indeed did end up spending more than a few days in this universe, she'd have to give him a suitable excuse for her absence, particularly since she wouldn't have a story to make up for it. Or did she? Parallel universes were definitively a story, and an extended stay could make for a great feature, but what would her angle be? Plus, she'd need a camera—another things for tomorrow's to do list. So yeah: Item 1: Buy underwear. Item 2: get camera. Item 3: To be determined, which she quite liked—ever since meeting the turtles, she'd barely get time to herself, and she was glad for the opportunity, even if it required getting herself transported to another dimension. What would tomorrow bring? She wasn't sure, but she was excited to find out.

* * *

**Author's note: **_So yeah: guess which movie I went to see last week. Also, for those who never followed the original TMNT comics, Shadow Jones is Casey (and then April's) stepdaughter in that particular continuity. Her story will be elaborated upon in future chapters. _


	3. A Qualitative Comparison

The clock read 8:00, which to Casey Jones seemed blasphemous: no way was he up that early. Not after Shadow's 3:00 a.m. crying bout, which took half an hour to stop. And her other one, at five. And yet there he was—life was full of small miracles.

After checking on Shadow—sound asleep, the lucky little father-waker—Casey made his way to the kitchen, but not before running into the April who wasn't his wife. She was watching the morning news—something about a claim by Tea Party Party economists that invading the Triceraton Republic would eliminate the need for taxes _and_ solve the deficit—and looked like she'd been up for a while. "Geez Louise—how is it you're up this early?"

"Oh—hey Casey," said April who wasn't his wife and had world-class breasts under that shirt of hers. "I'm just catching up on some news—the early bird gets the Peabody and all that. I don't understand half the stories, but still, it's a hard habit to break."

"Gotcha," said Casey, who didn't get it at all. News to him were something that mattered to smarter, more employed people than him. If something truly important occurred in the world, he'd eventually hear about it from his friends or from April. The one exception to this (aside from anything having to do with the Purple Dragons) occurred on 9/11, whose events led him to spend the entire day at Angel's grandmother's watching the coverage with the rest of the people at their apartment complex, until a lack of food and sleep caused him to pass out from exhaustion.

"I'm going to make myself some breakfast," Casey told April who was not his wife, had world-class breasts under that shirt of hers and looked all kinds of cute with her hair all messy like that. "You want any? I can make a mean pancake."

"As long as it doesn't include pizza or raw fish."

He didn't get the reference, but didn't ask for elaboration. He left their visitor behind and arrived at the kitchen, where he set about the task of preparing breakfast.

For most of his adult life, Casey Jones had one simple philosophy when it came to food: if it had instructions more complicated than "add milk to bowl" or "insert in microwave and press buttons", it was not worth preparing. After he and April became a couple, this slowly began changing, particularly after he discovered that his future wife (herself no big fan of cooking) found men who cooked to be quite sexy. Over time, he had acquired a modest repertoire of foods he liked to prepare, and pancakes topped the list (and no, the fact that several of its toppings could be applied onto the human body for impromptu fun had nothing to do with it, thank you very much). As he prepared to add the blueberries to the batter, he noticed that April who was not his wife, who looked all kind of cute with her hair tussled up like that and whom he now saw had awesome legs had joined him in the kitchen. "You want anything special in your pancakes?" He asked.

"Blueberries are fine."

Casey watched the pancake mix for the telltale bubbles; once these popped, it was time to turn the semi-solid product around to let the other half harden. He'd finished his first batch of pancakes when he asked his visitor: "So, is there a Casey Jones where you're from?"

"No," said his guest. Upon seeing his disappointment, she quickly added "…t that I know of. There very well could be. In fact, it's almost probable."

Casey responded to this courtesy with a lopsided grin. "Thanks. By the way, once April wakes up, she'll take you out to shop for anything you might need. That okay?"

"That's fine. By the way, I never asked: what do you work at?"

Casey looked at the otherworldly journalist uncertainly. April—the one who was his wife, whom he loved unconditionally and who would always be a total babe—had told him about the importance her counterpart placed on career, and he'd hoped that she wouldn't ask about his. "I…um…I do lots of stuff. I keep the building running, help out at the store…Oh, and I'm a mechanic—sort of. I mean, I help my buds out whenever their cars or bikes break down." _Smooth, Jones._

Casey tried to gauge April-who-was-not-his wife's reaction, but found it impossible; her many notable physical attributes apparently also included a poker face. He hoped the lack of obvious disappointment meant that she did not in fact think of him as a general failure—he just didn't agree, and he didn't want to get into

As he finished the last of the pancakes, April—the one who was his wife, would always be a total babe, had awesome legs, breasts, and looked all kinds of cute with her hair all messy like that—joined the pair in the kitchen, and the three—plus Shadow, now brought into the dining room—had breakfast.

* * *

"Hey, April…do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you hadn't met the turtles?"

The two Aprils had been strolling through Prospect Park after a morning of shopping. After three hours of strolling through Brooklyn, April had everything she needed for her stay in alternate New York: underwear, a notepad, a packet of pens, a tape recorder (she'd have preferred a camera, but in the end they decided it would have been too expensive, particularly since her host was footing the bill), a disposable cell phone (other April's idea) and a canister of pepper spray (ditto). Afterwards they'd gone to lunch at Martin's, a hamburger place she loved in her universe, and which was fortunately intact in this one. With nothing else that needed doing, they'd decided to stop at the park to unwind.

Her companion did not take long in answering. "Assuming I were even alive and not in jail for colluding with Baxter Stockman? Probably working at a tech job somewhere and growing unhappy." The shop-keeper's eyes looked troubled as she said this; this was something' she'd obviously thought about before. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just that, well, how can you not think about it? One day I'm hotshot reporter April O'Neil, the next I can't take a step without having to play babysitter to four manic-depressive turtles, getting kidnapped, or discovering a new mutant monstrosity—it's the sort of thing where you end up dividing your life between 'before' and 'after', and I wonder what could have been—you know?"

The reporter felt her counterpart's eyes upon hers, all sympathy and understanding. "Hell yes. God knows I've had times when I wished I'd never met them. And I won't deny that they've caused me a lot of grief over the years. It doesn't matter. They're family."

"But they can be so annoying! Can you believe that Leonardo once threw open tubes of lipstick at my paintings? He called it 'target practice'—and he's supposed to be the responsible one!"

To her surprise, her counterpart was actually taken aback by that. "Sounds like your turtles are more of a handful than mine are," the shop-keeper opined. "But yeah, that will happen too—I know I've wanted to kill my turtles once or twice when we lived together (and I'll tell you about _that_ later): but let me tell you something: a few years back, the turtles disappeared—poof!—into thin air. We heard nothing about them for a fucking year. And you know what? That was by far the hardest year of my life."

Now it was the reporter's turn to look concerned. "What happened?"

"Lots of things. Little things that combined with big things. My father had a stroke, and after spending about a month in the hospital, he had to stay with my sister until he died a few months later. Then there were the money problems caused by the hospital bill and the economy… Also, I discovered that nobody will hire me because apparently I am no longer considered qualified enough to do tech work I could do in my sleep.

"Granted, the bad stuff didn't happen because the turtles weren't there, and having them here wouldn't have prevented any of it from happening. Still, it'd have been easier if they'd been there. Mikey's jokes, Splinter's advice…I could have really used them. It would have made all the crap I went through a bit more bearable."

April remained silent as she heard her counterpart, partly because there was nothing she could say, and partly because her account seemed so foreign. Granted, she knew what a stroke was, and had a theoretical understanding on how the economy worked, but these things had always been just that—theoretical. In her world, nobody ever got strokes or got cancer or ever went to the hospital for anything not related to the effects of some weird ray or potion. Death was something you heard happened in some places but never affected anyone you actually knew. To have someone actually have to deal with these things _and_ the Shredders and aliens and Technodromes…how did the people in this universe _do_ it? It gave her a new level of respect for the people in this skewed mirror universe.

"But I'm just rambling," said the other April. "The guys eventually returned, and things eventually got better. Crap won't stop happening with them here, but I'd rather face it with them than without them—even if it means losing more breakables than the proverbial china shop."

"I see," said April. She did, in fact, feel that way towards the turtles—sometimes. Half the time, they were the funniest, most heroic, best people one could hope to know. The other half? Well, the kindest way to put it would be "children". Specifically, two-year-olds. Raised by wolves—which when you considered the reality, wasn't that far from the truth. Given Splinter's ability to remain calm in the middle of a tornado, he wasn't sure how his students turned out the way they did.

And if they were gone for a year? Assuming the Shredder and his goons didn't end up conquering the world, she didn't know how she'd feel. She'd have to find something else to cover, that's for sure. And her relationship with her boss would probably improve. And she'd probably get kidnapped a lot less. Aside from that, she had no idea.

The two Aprils continued their stroll, stopping occasionally to appreciate some interesting sight or another. As they stopped to pet two adorable dogs and chat with their owner (who didn't seem to mind at all having two attractive women just walk up and start talking to him), they heard a sudden "boom" in the distance.

As both women scanned the area for the source of the sound, they spotted a plume of dark smoke rising about three blocks away. As they watched the spectacle, April spotted a black and white streak speeding through the New York sky. Not a bird. Not a plane.

"Probably Silver Sentry," the older April explained, with the indifferent attitude of someone for whom flying men were as common as jaywalkers. She, on the other hand, was entranced, not just be the idea of real-life superheroes, but by a familiar feeling in her gut: a story. Taking out her new notepad, a pen and the tape recorder from her shopping bags, she left the other items with her counterpart, and with a hasty excuse, set towards the scene of the event.

* * *

When April the shop-keeper finally reached the scene of the explosion—an apartment complex across the street from the Methodist Hospital—the site had already been cordoned off to keep inevitable onlookers at bay, and the fire was mostly under control. Her reporter counterpart, immediately visible in her jumpsuit (now liberally mottled with black stains from the smoke—according to one of the onlookers, she'd entered the burning building and had rescued a teenaged boy) within the gaggle, was interviewing one of the firemen not working with the blaze. Silver Sentry, she heard, had come and gone, staying only long enough to get the tenants out from the burning edifice and to make sure the N.Y.F.D. would have no problems with the fire itself. Fortunately, the incident's location meant there was no shortage of medical personnel treating the affected tenants.

As she neared her "sister" in order to inform her that her continued stay at her apartment was contingent on her never pulling that stunt again, April noticed that her counterpart was practically beaming. This was it: her element. This is what she was meant to do. For the second time in as many days, April found herself growing jealous of her other-dimensional counterpart.

"Hey, April!" The reporter said, turning to her as she saw her approaching. "Give me just a couple more minutes, and I'll be done, okay?" She returned to her fireman interviewee, whom April noticed was paying an inordinate amount of attention to the reporter, and was actually trying his hand at flirting with her. Unfortunately for him, his advances seemed to be going over their target's head, although this did not deter him from writing down his phone number on the reporter's notepad.

True to her word, April was soon done with the interviews and reunited with her counterpart. As they walked to the nearest subway station in the first part of their trek back home, the two Aprils talked about the events that had just transpired.

"So, are you going to call that fireman?" April the Shop-Owner asked, vicariously happy at the attention her counterpart had received.

"Who, Paul? What do you mean? You mean, to confirm his statement?" her double said blankly.

"You didn't notice? He was into you! You should ask him out—he was hot." Figures—her one chance to the "Sex and the City" gal-pal thing, and it turned out to be with the one for whom men where apparently not a factor. "Anyway, change of subject. Did you really enter the building as it was burning?"

"Yeah, I did," the reporter said, with a smile that plainly expressed how much she'd loved it. "I wanted to see how the Silver Sentry worked, and then I saw a kid that needed help. So I helped—how could I not?"

Again with that certainty. April didn't know whether to admire her counterpart or to shake her until she regained a measure of sense. Had she herself ever been that stupid? While, assaulting a U.S. Government base or taking on the Technodrome hadn't been highlights of rational though, she could at least _justify_ them. This…? No wonder the reporter's turtles had to rescue her as often as they did.

And yet there she was, none the worse for wear, and with the sort of afterglow she herself only rarely managed to emit. Even the fire seemed to have left her untouched, outside of token damage to her clothing. Clearly someone—God, the universe, some cosmic writer—was keeping her under its aegis. And if one was indeed blessed, why wouldn't one take those risks?

Finally, the two Aprils arrived at Hell's Kitchen, and after a few minutes' walk towards one of the old Irish-American streets still (relatively) untouched by the neighborhood's encroaching gentrification, they arrived at the 2nd Time Around antique store—home.

* * *

He truly was blessed, the man formerly in the baseball cap thought, as he observed the two women entering the antique store. After getting a glimpse of the woman in yellow the day before, he had expected never to meet her again, leaving his memories of her exquisite form to haunt him for the rest of time. But God, as always, was with him; as he took the subway to nowhere in particular, she saw her again, a demon in bright (if slightly smudged), form-fitting yellow—and with that glance all his uncertainties evaporated. "Thy will be done", he said to his invisible conversation partner.

Thus, he had followed, and had ascertained the woman's living place. Now it was just a matter of time.

* * *

_**Notas del autor:** As fans of the old cartoon already know, there is indeed a Casey Jones in the old cartoon universe; April as I'm writing her has yet to meet him. For the record, this all takes place between seasons two and three of the old toon—_Turtles Forever_, on the other hand, takes place sometime in the middle of season 2._

_Although I don't recall if Reporter April's age was ever set in stone, I consider her to be twenty-six for the purposes of this story. Shop-Keeper April, on the other hand, is thirty-one. Casey is either thirty-three or thirty-four, depending on what month I decide he was born in, and Shadow is between three and six months old._

_As for what reporter April plans to do with all her notes on the fire, read on._


End file.
